Pick-up trucks have achieved great popularity, having a cargo bed with a substantially rectangular horizontal floor frequently between four and six feet wide and six and ten feet long, and with vertical sides between one and three feet high. Typically, stationary walls form the front and two adjacent sides, and a removeable or hinged tail gate forms the remaining rear side and provides access to the bed floor for cargo loading and unloading. The trucks are thus particularly suited to carry any article of most any size, even approximating the bed size.
However, as many bed floors are relatively smooth and flat, any carried article(s) smaller than the cargo bed itself can slide about on the bed floor under the dynamic forces created when the truck is being driven. Plastic bed liners for the cargo bed might provide greater friction against the carried article(s), but not enough to preclude that the carried article(s) do not yet slide around in the bed. A sliding article could fall from the truck, or could smash against the cargo bed sides to cause damage to the truck or itself and/or create instability in the driving characteristics of the truck. Thus, it is desirable and common when easily possible to secure the carried article(s) relative to the bed.
One effective common way of securing the carried article(s) relative to the bed is to wrap a flexible tie line around or over the carried article(s) and to connect the ends of the tie line to some fixed anchoring means on the truck body. The tie line can be in the form of wires, straps and/or ropes made of either inelastic or elastic material, and several tie lines could be used for holding heavy and/or large and/or several articles.
However, despite this obvious need, many pick-up truck bodies are stylishly constructed with the cargo bed being formed by closed sculptured upper sidewall edges, and with smooth bed walls and floor; so that there is no exposed anchoring means in the truck bed, making the use of tie lines difficult if not impossible.
Moreover, even those truck bodies that do provide exposed anchoring means, such as braces or webbing extended between the bed floor and wall and/or along the bed walls, such anchoring means are limited both in numbers and locations. For example, some truck bodies may provide two such rigid anchoring structures at the front and rear corners of each side wall, and possibly one additional anchoring structure along the side wall between the front and rear; but otherwise the cargo bed is void of suitable anchoring means for tie line means.
Anchor bolts and/or rails are also commerically available as accessory hardware items, so that a truck owner can secure any of these items where believed needed, such as at any or all of the above-mentioned locations, or at other locations including across the front or rear walls, on the bed floor or even outside of the cargo bed.
However, within the practical limits of the overall number of such anchoring structures provided with any typical cargo bed, there nonetheless will only be a specific number of them and only then at specific fixed locations relative to the bed. Because of this and the fact that the article(s) could be of virtually any ramdom size, the required routing of the tie line(s) frequently may yet provide inadequate or marginal means to hold the article(s) securely relative to the truck bed, unless extra tie lines are used to bolster the marginal routing paths.